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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

(Ancient) Egyptian Feast!

Well, maybe not ANCIENT, exactly, but I decided to make an Egyptian-style meal to tie in with all the time we’ve spent on Egypt this year with our Story of the World history. Just don’t make me do it when we get to Ancient Rome… the thought of all those rotten fish sauces is somewhat icky.

Cucumbers, which originated (as far as I know) in the ancient middle east (the tomatoes were a mistake, not just because of the anachronism, but because they were REALLY “off” tasting and I couldn’t eat the cucumber as a result... though I threw pickles into mine to compensate.

Aish al Saraya (Palace Bread), created from a composite of recipes online. We melted 1.5 sticks of butter with 1 cup of honey and 1/2 a cup of sugar and stirred in 300g of challah crumbs. While stirring those together (careful, it burns!), I made the “cream” to go on top: 4 cups of milk, 4 tbsp sugar, simmer, then add 5 tbsp corn starch dissolved in a bit of water. Optionally, you can add rose water and/or orange-blossom water, but I didn’t have either of those things. This is a basic not-very-sweet pudding, except it didn’t really thicken, just stayed gloppy on top of the dessert, which, after stirring for a while, we pressed into a square pan and refrigerated with the “pudding” on top. Naomi preferred the taste when it was still warm, but didn’t complain too much about eating it cold. :-)

To accompany the feast, I made this foldable paper sphynx. I don’t think I did it quite right, but considering it started out looking like this:

And – given absolutely no instructions or guide of any kind - ended up looking like this:

…I think I did a pretty decent job of it! Here’s Gavriel Zev, fascinated, trying to snatch it away…

I wanted to make a “friendly” sphynx because while Naomi Rivka loves all things Ancient Egypt, she’s still a little creeped out by the Sphynx.